The Accusations Fly

My rule of thumb for candidates accused of campaign
shenanigans/illegalities would be this: Publicly say that you take this sort of
thing very seriously, that you certainly hope and expect that nobody on
your staff behaved badly, but you're going to take a few days to look
into it to satisfy yourself, and the public, that nothing inappropriate
took place.

At the very least, that buys you time to find out what evidence is coming out publicly.

None of the three Massachusetts gubernatorial candidates recently accused of campaign shenanigans took that approach.

But let's back up a moment, to remind ourselves -- and any out-of-state or not-politically-obsessed
readers -- what got us here.

Long, long ago, roundabout the start of 2010, former GOP state represetnative Paul Loscocco tried to convince
presumptive GOP gubernatorial nominee Charlie Baker to pick him as his
running-mate. Baker, in the last smart decision he made in the race,
said no.

Loscocco knocked on
independent Tim Cahill's door next, because Deval Patrick already had an LG; Cahill took him in, sparing Paul
the humiliation of begging Jill Stein to let him into the Green-Rainbow
party.

In retrospect, we can now see more clearly what
Loscocco had to offer as an LG. What he lacked in fundraising ability,
name recognition, voter base, personality, full-tme commitment, and
trustworthiness, he more than made up for in access to incredibly bad
political consultants.

Baker, of course, already had a full complement of incredibly bad
political consultants. But Cahill, under a pox from both parties, was
having trouble finding incredibly bad political consultants willing to
come work for him, so Loscocco was a Godsend. In came Loscocco buddies John Yob, John
Weaver, and Adam Meldrum, often refered to collectively as "the consultants," or, as I have decided
to start calling them, "Yobgoblins."

A few weeks ago, the Yobgoblins -- including Loscocco --deserted the
Cahill campaign, claiming that they had just discovered that their
candidate couldn't win. That claim was particularly odd, since Cahill
was actually polling as high or better at that stage of the campaign as
Jesse Ventura in 1998 -- presumably the role model for an independent to
win as governor. (And Cahill was a wrestler too!)

The Yobgoblins accused Cahill's people of
coordinating with Lottery staff on its ad campaign, and doing campaign
work on state time as Treasurer employees. Cahill accused Baker's people
of coordinating with the Yobgoblins and the Republican Governors
Association, and of using Cahill campaign info purloined by the
Yobgoblins. The Yobgoblins accused the Patrick people of colluding with
Cahill staff and the Democratic Governors Association.

Oh, and there are also lots of accusations about the Yobgoblins, but let's keep our eye on the political impact on the candidates.

None of the three candidates did the "I'm taking
it seriously and will look into it" approach. Cahill vehemently denied
any and all wrongdoing. Baker treated the accusations as wacky,
frivolous conspiracy theory undeserving of a serious response. Patrick
mostly kept quiet, while letting his staff (specifically, advisor Doug
Rubin) vehemently deny all wrongdoing.

All three
approaches can be quite effective if the accusations melt away -- but
pose dangers to the candidate if the accusations 'get legs' as we say in
the news biz.

The charges against Cahill got some legs
yesterday, coming out of the hearing on his lawsuit against the
Yobgoblins. The hearing was to determine whether the judge would gag the
Yobgoblins from disclosing any Cahill campaign info. Cahill says he's
trying to keep strategy and database info out of competitor's hands; the
Yobgoblins say he's trying to block the release of proof of their
allegtations. The judge split the baby, protecting the former but not
the latter -- and out came emails purportedly proving the Lottery ad
conspiracy.

To my eyes, the emails -- which
presumably are the worst and in fact totality of the evidence in the
Yobgoblin's hands -- don't include a real smoking gun. But they look
pretty bad, from a political/PR standpoint.

But
what really looks bad is that those emails fly in the face of Cahill's
adamant insistence that there was nothing at all to be found. Had he
used my rule of thumb, he could now (or even better, earlier) discuss
those emails along with broader context, and an expression of
disappointment to learn that his staff had danced a little too close to
the ethical line.

Instead, he looks like he either knew all along and was lying, or didn't know and
didn't find out even after the allegations were made. That's not the
kind of guy you necessarily want to put in charge of the state
government.

So, that's Cahill. As for Patrick --
well, nothing's backfired on him, because after the initial
broad-swiping accusation, everyone seems to have backed away from the
allegations against him. Perhaps that will change, but so far the
accusations have no legs, and he's been fine.

Then
there's Baker. As I said above, the Baker campaign has treated the
accusations as a big joke. It's initial response to the Cahill lawsuit
and accusations was all of two sentences, and included the
way-too-cutely-worded denial: "We did not receive any written internal
information regarding the Cahill
campaign, period." And here's their entire response issued to
yesterday's accusations, that the Baker campaign used a purloined
database of Cahill donor's emails to send its own fundraising
solicitation:

Another day, another desperate conspiracy theory
from Tim Cahill. Tomorrow it will be that Terry Francona is leaking
critical line-up information to the Yankees."

Which strikes me as not only inappropriately snarky,
but insensitive right after the Red Sox season ended and the Yankees
advanced to the ALCS. Too soon!

So far, the charges against the Baker folks haven't quite got
legs -- but they haven't gone away, either. Now, the judge has ordered
the Yobgoblins to provide by Monday, under oath, an accounting of
everything from the Cahill campaign they have thus far disclosed to
anyone, including Baker or RGA staff. If there is anything, it might not
become public; presumably the Yobgoblins would ask for it to be under
seal, and I would think the judge is likely to comply. But it could push
the story (and the reporters) back toward Baker; and if at some point
the campaign does have to admit to something -- anything really -- it
could look much worse after treating the accusations and questions with
such disdain.